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Wednesday, July 07, 2004 |
When you bite off more than you can chew...
...you pay the penalty. Ron Rosenbaum writes pretty brilliantly
in the New York Observer on Blood on the Tracks, and particularly its
lost gem, Up to Me. (Alas, the Observer's URLs change, so that one won't last, I'll try to remember to get an archive URL when I can.)
Up to Me was left off BOTT in favor of the inferior Shelter From the
Storm. I always thought the latter was a too obvious song, too
posturing. Up to Me is still posturing, but I like the writing much
more, it's more dubious, self-centered (even than Shelter from the
Storm). But its images work better for me, and nearly every line is
great. " In fourteen months I've only smiled once and I didn't do it
consciously," is fantastic.
I remember first hearing this song when McGuinn's Cardiff Rose came out
in May of 76. The previous two years had given us some fantastic,
breathtaking Dylan albums: BOTT, Desire, The Basement Tapes. Then to
hear this song, a BOTT outtake, nearly the peer of the best songs from
that album, was a revelation. Were there more? Why wasn't this one on
it? One of the mysteries us bobolators (to use Rosenbaum's term) have
to contend with is why Dylan often makes such poor choices about his
ablums (contrary to what Rosenbaum says, I find most bobolators archly
critical of Dylan in this regard), often leaving gems out of the
canonical releases. This is at its worst, of course, with Infidels,
which release made a mockery of some fantastic sessions.
Well, there's nothing we can do about it, I guess. Bob's version was
released on Biograph. I've just listened to both, and Rosenbaum has a
point about McGuinn's version being superior, if not by much. It's
going to be harder to find than the Biograph version, but either way,
dig them up.
2:22:09 PM Permalink
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Cheney Lies! What a Surprise!. The Poor Man is completely dumbfounded to learn that, when Richard Cheney said he had access to information the 911 Commission had not seen, Cheney was lying. What a surprise!
The Poor Man: Surprise, Surprise: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Sept. 11 commission, which reported no collaborative links between Iraq and al Qaeda, said on Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney had no more information than commission investigators to support his later assertions to the contrary.
The 10-member bipartisan panel investigating the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington said it reached its conclusion after reviewing available transcripts of Cheney's public remarks asserting long-standing links between the former Iraqi president and Osama Bin Laden's Islamist militant network.
"The 9-11 Commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9-11 attacks," the commission said in a statement." [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]
Actually, Cheney is right: the commission doesn't know what it doesn't know! And since Unca Dick isn't saying what he knows that they don't know, then they must be wrong!
1:28:05 PM Permalink
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Jul 7, 2004: 9/11 commission rebukes Cheney. The 9/11 commission is publicly rebuking the administration -- especially Vice President Cheney -- for continuing to claim that al Qaeda collaborated with Saddam Hussein despite all evidence to the contrary.
Cheney had suggested that he had evidence t... [Kicking Ass]
9:30:38 AM Permalink
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More on Moore's "deceits". Matt Yglesias has been doing sterling work on the double standards employed by Michael Moore’s critics. So, as a supplement to my two earlier posts on the same topic, I’d like to draw attention to his latest. He cites Volokh Conspirator Randy Barnett, who has read Kopel’s Fifty-six deceits in Farenheit 911. Barnett observes:
I was struck by the sheer cunningness of Moore’s film. When you read Kopel, try to detach yourself from any revulsion you may feel at a work of literal propaganda receiving such wide-spread accolades from mainstream politicos, as well as attendance by your friends and neighbors. Instead, notice the film’s meticulousness in saying only (or mostly) “true” or defensible things in support of a completely misleading impression.
Matt comments, fairly and reasonably:
The funny thing, though, is that if I wrote “The 56 Deceits of George W. Bush” (as, indeed, many people have done) then some very intelligent Volokh Conspirator (as, indeed, many of the conspirators are) would doubtless have written a post in response (as, indeed, I’ve read at the Conspiracy) arguing that most of the alleged “lies” weren’t lies per se (and, indeed, they’re mostly misleading juxtapositions of technically true information) and that these sorts of ad hominem attacks don’t really prove that the presidents’ policies are actually wrong.
Quite. [Crooked Timber]
8:10:02 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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